Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Despite Large Investment in Wind Energy

Want to reduce GHG emissions? Don't put all your eggs in the windfarm basket.

This week the EPA reported that emissions have risen across all main sectors in the Irish economy. It was widely reported on in the Irish media but certain details were either omitted or not focused on. 

In 2016, we had about 2,800MW of wind energy in Ireland, enough electricity generating capacity to meet about 50% of demand on a winter's day like today. If the wind was blowing constantly all the time. As it doesn't, we get about 840MW output on average. But this output varies every day and year. 

An interesting fact can be gleaned from this, although it is not apparent in the EPA report or in media articles (investigative journalists are in short supply, hence the need for blogs like this one). We built about 460MW of new wind farms in 2016. The EPA report states that :

Renewables now account for 25.6% of electricity generated in 2016 (down from 27.3% in 2015).

     So we built more wind farms, costing somewhere in the region of €600-800 million, but the total share of renewables contribution to electricity actually decreased. Yes, I hear you say, but what about demand ? Demand increased by 2.3%. We can infer from Eirgrid's reports that this was an annual increase of about 630,000MW/hr. This converts to an average growth in power demand of about 70 MW.

This means that the 460MW of new wind farms were not able to keep pace with electricity growth of 70MW or just 15% of the new wind capacity. So you can see the folly of adding more wind. New wind farms do not automatically mean more renewable energy or reduced emissions. 

Meanwhile, eco warriors and greens are warning about the dangers of Irish agriculture. Beef exports make up about 25% of total Irish exports. The same people egging on the eradication of our beef production are also (mostly) the same people freaking out about the negative impact of Brexit on the Irish economy. Looks like a serious case of cognitive dissonance to me.


1)  Eirgrid Report on wind energy 2016 - http://www.eirgrid.ie/site-files/library/EirGrid/Annual-Renewable-Constraint-and-Curtailment-Report-2016-v1.0.pdf

China Energy In Numbers - Part One

This will be a series of short posts which I hope will put the energy revolution in China in perspective.

With Irish media outlets like state broadcaster RTE constantly pushing the narrative that China will be a renewables powerhouse within a couple of decades, I hope this series of posts will act as a counter balance to this type of propaganda.

China’s most recent Five-Year Plan has set a target for an additional 58 GW of nuclear capacity by 2020. 

This capacity will provide enough power equivalent to the average demand of the entire French grid on a typical winter's day.


-US Energy Agency

Oil and Coal Imports Rise Since Irish National Renewable Energy Action Plan

In 2010, Ireland introduced it's National Renewable Energy Action Plan. One might have expected a reduction in fossil fuel imports since that time but in fact both oil and coal imports have risen. Only gas imports have declined. 

	ktoe	ktoe
	Imports 2016	Imports 2010
Crude	3,270	3,113
Gasoline (petrol)	795	1,098
Kerosene	520	530
Jet Kerosene	1,122	1,068
Fueloil	60	316
LPG	136	122
Gasoil DERV	2,684	2,278
Bitumen	230	299
Total Oil	9,009	8,957
Coal bituminous	1,084	921

                     Source: SEAI Energy Data

In the case of oil, most of the increase is due to an increase in motor cars. The increased coal imports are been used in Moneypoint Power Station and are a consequence of the price of coal having dropped since 2010.

What this proves is the madness of Ireland's wind only policy which can only displace gas, the least emitting fossil fuel. If we really are in trouble with the climate, then converting Moneypoint to either gas or nuclear is the only solution in town.  Which of course nobody really wants to look at and that tells you something.

Natural Gas Imports

As for gas imports, these have declined. Some of that is due to the 3,000MW of wind energy. Other equally important factors are the Shell gas reserve off the sea at County Mayo which came into production in 2016 (which in fact accounts for about 80% of the reduction), the new interconnector to the UK which up to recently was providing a net import into Ireland and an increase in peat and coal production. Gas imports have in total declined by 60% or 11% if Shell gas reserve is excluded.

Although there was a reduction in gas used in the residential sector, there was an increase in gas used in the industrial sector. In particular, the metals industry and behind that the foods industry.

New Report: The Costs of Wind Energy in Ireland

The new report by Wind Aware Ireland is now available to read online :

https://neilvandokkum.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/he-cost-of-wind.pdf

Total annual costs due to wind have been calculated at € 1.2 billion. I would say this is an under estimation. Other costs such as ancillary costs and maintenance costs for conventional generation are missing from this report. Ancillary costs are now over € 70 million per year. Some of those are required without wind, others like synchronous compensation are a direct consequence of wind energy. 

I have to agree with economist Colm McCarthy when he says "It should not have been left to this voluntary group to raise these vital policy questions. "

Event Announcement: The Costs of Wind Energy in Ireland

Wind Aware Ireland will be launching their new report “The Costs of Wind Energy in Ireland” in Buswells’ Hotel, Dublin at 11.15 on Wednesday (15th November). This report may precipitate the latest scandal in public spending.

The report shows that the Irish State and consumer are spending approximately €1.2 billion per year on wind energy and no one has done the sums to justify this spend.

The Irish Academy of Engineering found that focusing mainly on wind to reduce emissions would create the highest technical risk, would generate the lowest amount of reliable electricity and had lowest public acceptability compared to using biomass or carbon capture and storage. They said “A detailed analysis needs to be carried out of the costs and socio-economic implications of reducing emissions”.

Economist Colm McCarthy noted “It is time for Government to acknowledge that Ireland has enough wind farms, that they cost too much in subsidies and that promising routes to cut emissions lie elsewhere.”

All legally mandated checks and balances for wind energy have been bypassed; no costs benefit analysis, no strategic environmental assessment and no regulatory impact analysis has ever been undertaken to justify this spend.

This sheer lack of accountability and the capture of policy by wind developers should be grounds for a national scandal.

Paula Byrne (PRO)

Wind Aware Ireland

www.windawareireland.com

Phone:  057 86 27048

Mobile: 086 8241523

Email:  paula@windawareireland.com

The New Renewable Electricity Support Scheme

The consultation for the forthcoming Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS) ends today. Here is my submission :

A Floating Feed in Premium (FIP) which reduces over time to nil as the generators borrowings are paid down should be the primary financial support mechanism for the main RESS. This makes a lot of sense with regard to Irish wind energy which is now a mature technology, where there are no fuel costs and where Irish wind farms have access to the best wind resources in Europe.

I believe that LCOE is not a good measure for comparing different sources of generation.  As is well known, the system effects of uncontrollable variable renewables are not adequately addressed by LCOE, since adding uncontrollable variable renewables to a system increases overall costs (new grid and operating procedures, suboptimal operation of the conventional fleet and new fast acting plant required as back up), all of which tends to reduce system productivity thus increasing costs. LCOE doesn’t capture this, so a Total System Cost analysis is required to discover what the probable effect would be on the consumer. This does not appear to have been carried out.

I therefore do not agree with the statement that “the least-cost RES-e mix would consist of mostly onshore wind”.

Indeed, the system costs will rise exponentially with the higher levels of wind proposed in RESS as conventional plant will be forced to run at far below their optimal efficiency*.  

This means that the viability gaps of various renewable technologies are not comparable as stated in the RESS report. Some technologies incur less system costs (like biomass which can use the existing grid), some incur more.

In an analysis carried out by Irish Energy Blog, it was found that even without including the additional grid investment required for wind and other system costs, we have to spend € 1.00 on wind energy to replace 40 cents worth of fossil fuels. This does not represent value for money to the consumer nor is it a cost effective way of reducing fossil fuel imports.  I would support instead investing in energy efficiency and in particular Passive Housing as a more cost effective way of reducing emissions.

Best wind location in Europe

“Ireland has one of the best onshore wind locations in Europe. Purely from a technical perspective, ignoring all other considerations, the unrestricted technical potential for onshore wind would be more than sufficient to meet Ireland’s energy needs”.

I fail to understand why, if the above statement is true, Irish onshore wind requires a high support scheme. Surely if Ireland has one of the best onshore wind locations in Europe, then a lower support scheme would be required than other European countries as the resource is greater.

In Germany, onshore wind receives € 4.66cent – 8.38cent per kWh (according to duration of payment) (§ 46 EEG 2017) minus €0.40 cent per kWh (§ 53 no. 2 EEG 2017) compared with    € 6.72 cent per kWh (5.1 and 5.2 REFIT 2) in Ireland.  The support scheme in Germany reduces over time which makes sense as the wind farms loans are paid down over the same period. A similar “reducing” scheme should now be adopted by Ireland given that Irish onshore wind is a mature technology and has access to the best wind resources in Europe.  This would provide best value for money to the consumer. The support scheme should eventually reduce to nil after a fixed period of say 10 years.

This would ensure that our society is not locked into high energy costs for many years to come.


*Increased costs of combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT) running inefficiently to provide back up for when the wind does not blow were estimated to rise by €175 million per annum according to a 2014 Single Electricity Market report.

Flexible capacity to exceed 25GW in the UK by 2030

In the UK, flexible capacity from batteries, peaking plants and demand-side response is set to reach more than 25GW by 2030. That is over half of demand. And the reason is because of renewables :

The firm says the rise of intermittent renewables - which undermine the profitability of large baseload generators but still require backup power - will push annual revenues from flexibility to nearly £3 billion by the end of the next decade.

This is important because this capacity will not be as efficient as baseload generators such as combined cycle gas turbine generators. They will need to respond quicker and as a result they will have higher emissions.  So when the wind is not blowing, the grid operators will have to resort to these fast acting plant or reducing demand. It still remains to be seen how batteries will operate in practice on such a large scale. 

The same is happening here in Ireland. Capacity of demand side response units, usually diesel generators, are now at 260MW.

Full article here:

http://utilityweek.co.uk/news/flexible-capacity-to-exceed-25gw-by-2030/1316312#.Wf3-RWi0PIV